Week One’s Emergency Telework Takeaways
By now everyone has seen Jimmie Fallon’s adorable children invade his broadcasting while working from home. What is deemed adorable by television viewers is not necessarily viewed adorable by the business’s customers or the business owner. They may view the overlap of children or animals into your workspace as distracting, unprofessional, or non-productive – and they may be right.
The coronavirus pandemic caught too many companies unprepared for a working from home model and it shows. Let’s face it – this is something few were prepared. By week one we realized that we sent many people home to telework. The shutdown of schools and daycares nationwide overwhelmed many of these people. We now understand the importance of establishing boundaries before we ask people to telework.
Take-A-Ways Week One: Make sure employee has workable station available.
We should only allow people who have a private area set up for work that will not be disturbed for X number of hours. Using a video camera, require the worker to show the layout of the room in which they’ll be working. OSHA rules and handbook guidelines still apply to the home office!
1) The room has phone, internet, and computer.
2) The cords tucked away and area is free of potential hazards.
3) The room is private for the required number of hours.
4) Security standards are the same as those found at the office.
If security is an issue in handling work in the office, then it is just as important when you send employees home. Confidentiality is confidentiality, compliance is compliance, laws are laws. Telework is no excuse to relax rules for handling personal data, information, or credit cards – keep the same security standards. The answers to those questions should determine who the employer chooses to work from home.
The closed door to the private space rule can usually solve the noise issue.
After the workspace question has been settled, the next question is whether silence is an essential. For most positions that do not involve making or receiving phone or video calls, silence is not necessary. The dogs can bark, the children can scream, and the radio or television can blare. Noise cancelling headphones might be used if the noise outside the employee’s space gets too distracting for the employee. When workers speak to customers or vendors or other office personnel then silence is a priority. The closed door to the private space rule can usually solve the noise issue.
Your quality monitoring tools should help supervisors determine if the noise quotient is acceptable for the telework assignment. Intelliview is one new product that allows supervisors to peek in and make sure all is well with the teleworking employee. Intelliview allows the supervisor to hear what is going on and to see what is happening in real time and allows for teleconferencing and face-to-face coaching sessions. It is possible to screen share using Intelliview. Supervisors can see anything needed to be seen on an employee’s screen.
These unprecedented times reinforce the fact that we must change and how and where the job is done. Intelliview provides the flexibility the 21st Century workforce needs and has been looking for. Interested in more information about Intelliview or Pipkins’ suite of workforce management tools? Request a demo today!